Nikoderiko: The Magical World Review (Treiden)
For what it is, it's decent. Nothing groundbreaking, but nothing too insultingly bad either.
Graphics are nice, cartoony, works well with what this game is trying to do.
Gameplay is mostly a love letter to Donkey Kong Country, with a sprinkling of Crash Bandicoot style gameplay here and there. Mostly Donkey Kong, though, which is for the best, because while the sidescrolling gameplay is good, the Crash style gameplay is.... not great.
The game's very easy, even on the normal mode, and relatively short. I took it to 90% in just under 7 hours, and that's the completion rate you get for finishing all the levels and finding every collectible in those levels. I'm not bothering with the last 10% because this is literally just sitting in a screen opening randomized loot chests over and over until you hit 100% or run out of in-game currency. Not exactly riveting gameplay. But if you're intending to play this with the goal of just beating the levels and not bothering with the collectibles, I imagine you could be through this game in under 5 hours, maybe less.
Presentation-wise... it's cute, and definitely aimed for a younger audience than me. I found myself skipping through every dialog scene (and there's quite a few, which are just there for comedic purposes and serve no story value) because I just found it rather on the cringy side. But for younger kids, this will probably be good. The boss cutscenes I did let play, and those are enjoyable and clever.
The thing that really keeps this game from being great and not just good, is the lack of polish. There's a LOT of glitches and bugs, some messing with level progress, that to my understanding have been in there since its initial release on consoles months ago. You'd think they would've used this time to patch those out, but odds are that they won't ever be patched out if it hasn't been done at this point. The difficulty does get a little (unintended) spike because of these, though. Bugs, glitches, or ridiculously oversized hitboxes on some enemies and bosses (as in: full character-wide areas of empty space between me and an enemy and I still end up getting hit) are the only things that have ever killed me in this game.
Like I said, for the price tag, this game is perfectly middle-of-the-road OK, but it's not going to win any game of the year awards. Get it if you love platformers like Donkey Kong Country (like I do), and you'll most likely enjoy this one too.